Bobbing about

Last Saturday we (my own-boat instructor and I) sailed out of Deganwy, up the River Conwy and out into the sea again.

Unbelievably (but true) it was another day of very light winds so we didn’t achieve much by way of long distance. We navigated a different course on the River Conwy which meant we weren’t fighting the incoming current for headway.

There’s a YouTube video on the ‘Sailing Salty Lass’ channel where their boat attempts to leave Conwy, but runs into the fierce incoming current, despite being backed by a windspeed of something like 15kts, when they got out to The Perch their speed over ground was reduced to 0Kts.

We got out past Great Orme and could see Anglesey and Puffin Island clearly.

We got down to the Fairway Marker (53-17-948N, 003-55-584W) and practised the ‘Crash Tack and Hove To’ manoeuvre. I’m a fan of this, it brings the boat to an absolute instant stop, a good thing in the case of a man overboard.

We fannied about a bit (technical term there) with the autohelm but it wasn’t playing by our rules. I brought it home to fault-find but it’s a tricky unit to unpick, so I’ve sent it off to a specialist in Dover to be debugged and serviced.

We’re doing about 4kts in this photo, with the island of Anglesey in the background.

When we were almost at the end of the day we dropped the sails, motored back up the Conwy and practiced lassoing mooring buoys for fun. We were lassoing them because I had taken the boathook home to clean and repair, and hadn’t taken it out of the car earlier because how was I supposed to know what we were going to get up to!

I have one more session with the instructor next Saturday; we’re going to concentrate on tides, currents, and map-reading. I’m particularly keen to brush up on tides and currents around the north Wales coast. As Salty Lass found out, the flows in these parts can catch out the unwary!

Not much distance under the keel due to the light winds; about 10nm.